Helphands

Customers came to the farmsite to buy tilapia merah. The options open to harvest the fish were by rambat, sunkened pukat sangkar and by drying the pond. Kondu Sadam was always called upon to help. He was lowly subsidised of his time. The amount of financial intake per month from the cost of the fish determined the percentage given.

Collected cost

Below RM1000.00 - 5%

Between RM1001.00 – RM1500.00 - 6%

RM1501.00 – RM2000.00 - 7%

Above RM2000.00 - 8%

The above arrangement was very neglegible and in any case rather uninviting. The percentages could be improved according to output in future.

Sadam’s name was Lawrence and he was baptised as an infant as Lawrence, so he proudly proclaimed. Nobody called him Lawrence for everyone called him with his glamour-name, Sadam. Ju once asked him whether he had taken his Sacrament of Confirmation, to which he said positively. Ju wanted to suggest the name Adam, so that the naming flaws, if it there was any flaw at all, could be put right. He proudly again proclaimed that his name at that time was also Lawrence. So great was his love for the name Lawrence that he took it twice when he had the choice of others. But, it was possible, in the Catholic Church. Sadam was only his name at kampung level. It was not even written on any document, the like of his Birth Certificate, Baptism Certificate, his National Identification Cards, and others. He was born when Sadam Hussien was the notorious president of Iraq during the Iraq/Iran war. The people around him, knowing that he was born male, called him Sadam. When he made any crying sound, his elder brother or sister could have naturally said, “ngoyo intangai i Yadam, tinutukan datid nandui”. (“Go and see Yadam, he might have been bitten by a big mosquito”). How naturally normal would have it been if Sadam’s name could have naturally evolved into Adam? Despite of his forced name being Sadam, his mother would call him loudly as Adam. His sisters and brothers, elder or younger, called him Adam, leaving the /s/ sound unennunciated. Their calls could be endearing calls to a brother. He was, for a long time, the dear youngest in the family, before his mother brought Clare home from the maternity clinic one day. The endearing attentions from all would have shifted from the one who was a little bit older to the one who was newly born. I would still call him by the orthodox name-call for a gentleman, be he a non-muslim, as Sadam, for coming to think of it, Sadam was a good name, at one time a Middle East Country President’s name! A much younger cousin of his was also kampung-named, Sadam.

How long would Sadam help Ju with his Fishfarm chores? He had recently hit his twenty second birthday. He would be thirty years old soon and by then he would already have started a young family life.